The highest level of the SCA Brewing pathway — where craft becomes science, and a great cup becomes a repeatable, measurable, world-class brew.
The SCA Brewing Professional course is the third and final tier of the Specialty Coffee Association's brewing pathway. By the time a barista, café owner, or roaster reaches this level, they already know how to pull a balanced V60 and dial in a competition-ready dripper. Brewing Professional is for the people who want to understand exactly why their brew tastes the way it does — and how to engineer that result every single time.
Across three intensive days at Tasse Coffee Roastery in Shinjuku, students step into the chemistry, physics, and sensory architecture of coffee brewing. We work with refractometers, modified water profiles, multiple grinders, and a wide library of brewing equipment to take your understanding from "I can taste it" to "I can quantify it, replicate it, and teach it."
Course at a glance
| Level | Professional (highest of three SCA Brewing levels) |
| Format | Private 1:1 or 1:2 hands-on training |
| Location | Tasse Coffee Roastery, Shinjuku, Tokyo |
| Languages | English / 日本語 / 普通话 / 廣東話 |
| Duration | 3 days of intensive theory + practical |
| Prerequisite | SCA Brewing Intermediate (recommended) |
| Certification | SCA Brewing Professional Certificate (25 CSP points) |
Below is a module-by-module look at what we cover, what you'll do with your hands, and what you'll leave the studio able to do.
MODULE 1
Advanced Coffee Knowledge — Roast Level & Extraction
Brewing Professional opens with the question every senior brewer eventually has to answer: how does roast level actually change the cup? We move past 'light = fruity, dark = roasty' and into the underlying chemistry — how Maillard reactions, caramelisation, and bean density influence which compounds extract first, which extract last, and how that maps to balance and clarity in the cup.
What you'll learn
- How roast development time and degree of roast affect solubility and extraction speed
- The sensory fingerprint of under-developed, well-developed, and over-developed roasts
- Why the same grind setting yields different EY% across roast levels — and how to compensate
- Mapping roast level to ideal brew ratios, contact time, and target TDS
Hands-on highlight
We brew three identical recipes across three different roast levels, measure each, and reverse-engineer the recipe changes needed to bring all three into the SCA gold cup zone.
MODULE 2
Brewing Methods & Equipment — Choosing & Calibrating
Not all gravity brewers are equal — and even within the same brewer, filter media, bed geometry, and material can shift extraction by several percentage points. Module two examines the physics behind brewer design and gives you a method for selecting, calibrating, and optimising any device you encounter.
What you'll learn
- How conical vs flat-bottom bed geometry changes flow and extraction uniformity
- Filter media: bleached, unbleached, abaca, metal — and how each shapes the final cup
- Brewer material (ceramic / glass / plastic / metal) and thermal behaviour
- Calibrating a gravity brewer: bed depth, drawdown time, agitation profile
Hands-on highlight
You'll work across four different gravity brewer designs side-by-side using the same coffee and ratio, then identify exactly which variable is driving the difference in each cup.
MODULE 3
The 7 Essential Elements of Brewing
At the heart of the Professional level is the SCA's framework of the seven essential brewing variables — grind, ratio, time, temperature, turbulence, water, and freshness — and how they interact rather than act in isolation. Once you can hold six constant and manipulate one with precision, dialling in any new coffee becomes a structured process, not guesswork.
What you'll learn
- Particle size distribution: what fines, boulders, and a balanced bimodal grind actually do
- Temperature curves: pre-infusion, steady-state, and decaying-temperature brewing
- Turbulence: pour height, agitation, swirl — when each helps and when each hurts
- How brew ratio and contact time co-vary to land specific yield and strength targets
Hands-on highlight
Each student designs and executes a 'controlled variable' brew matrix — running the same coffee through systematic changes in one element while keeping the rest fixed, then mapping the results on a TDS / EY grid.
MODULE 4
Water Chemistry & Quality
Coffee is over 98% water, and water is the one variable most home and café brewers ignore. Brewing Professional treats water as a designed input. We test source water, look at how hardness and alkalinity each pull different compounds out of the grounds, and build recipes that match a coffee to a water profile — not the other way around.
What you'll learn
- Total hardness, calcium / magnesium ratio, and alkalinity — what each does in the cup
- Reading a water report and identifying problems before they reach your brewer
- Filtration vs remineralisation vs building water from RO + concentrates
- Matching water profile to coffee origin, roast level, and brew method
Hands-on highlight
We test multiple water samples (tap, RO, mineralised, bottled) with TDS and alkalinity kits, then brew the same coffee on each to taste — and measure — the difference.
MODULE 5
Brewing Process — Bloom to Drawdown
Module five zooms in on the brewing event itself, second by second. From the bloom phase (where CO2 release determines how cleanly water can wet the bed) through extraction kinetics and drawdown, you learn to see the brew as a sequence of discrete phases — and you learn what each phase contributes to the cup.
What you'll learn
- Degassing, bloom science, and why fresh roasted coffee behaves differently
- The extraction curve: front-end acids, mid-extraction sugars, late-extraction bitterness
- Calculating soluble yield (EY%) from brewed weight, TDS, and dose
- Identifying under-extraction, balanced extraction, and over-extraction on the palate AND on the meter
Hands-on highlight
You'll do a 'phased pour' exercise: collect the first third, middle third, and final third of a brew separately and taste each to physically experience what each phase of extraction contributes.
MODULE 6
Brew Analysis & Sensory Evaluation
Professional brewing means making decisions on data, not feelings — but the data still has to map to the cup. This module pairs the refractometer with the cupping spoon. You learn to use TDS readings, EY%, and the SCA Brewing Control Chart to validate or correct your sensory impressions, and to communicate cup quality in repeatable, objective terms.
What you'll learn
- Operating a refractometer correctly: sampling, temperature, calibration
- Reading the SCA Brewing Control Chart — the strength × extraction matrix
- Describing a balanced brew using SCA descriptors and the Coffee Taster's Flavor Wheel
- Using sensory data and metric data together to diagnose a brew's weak point
Hands-on highlight
You'll be presented with five unknown brews, asked to score and describe each blind, then check your sensory verdict against the refractometer numbers — and learn how to close the gap between what you taste and what the meter reads.
MODULE 7
Maintenance & Optimisation — Burrs, Bypass, Consistency
A professional brewer's job is consistency at scale — across shifts, across weeks, across changing beans. The final module looks at the long-tail variables: grinder burr wear, retention, alignment, and the strategic use of bypass brewing to push a great recipe into a great workflow.
What you'll learn
- How burr wear changes particle distribution — and when to replace burrs
- Grinder retention, purging, and managing single-dose vs hopper workflows
- Bypass brewing: when adding water to a strong brew is a feature, not a shortcut
- Building SOPs that protect cup quality through staff changes and busy services
Hands-on highlight
We measure the particle distribution of a fresh burr set against a worn one, brew identical recipes through each, and watch the EY and clarity numbers shift in real time.
Who Is This Course For?
SCA Brewing Professional is the highest level of the brewing pathway, and it earns 25 points toward the SCA Coffee Skills Diploma. It's a fit for:
- Senior baristas and head baristas who own the brew bar program and need to coach, write recipes, and audit consistency.
- Roasters and Q-graders who want to validate their cupping protocols against repeatable brewed-coffee data.
- Café owners and consultants opening or rebuilding a brew bar program who need to specify water, equipment, and standards from first principles.
- Brewing competitors preparing for World Brewers Cup or similar — this is the technical foundation under any competition recipe.
- SCA Diploma candidates completing the Brewing pathway en route to certification.
What Comes After Brewing Professional?
For most students, Brewing Professional is the capstone of the Brewing track. The SCA Brewing pathway runs:
Foundation — 5 points
Core brewing science, ratios, the SCA gold cup, the basics of the dripper and immersion brewers.
Intermediate — 10 points
Recipe design, dialling in, sensory diagnosis, multi-brewer fluency, and basic water work.
Professional — 25 points (this course)
Full chemistry & physics framework, refractometry, designed water, burr-level optimisation, control-chart-driven cup quality.
Many graduates pair Brewing Professional with Sensory Skills Professional — the two together form the technical backbone of the SCA Coffee Skills Diploma and prepare students for further specialty pathways like Q Grader.
All courses at Tasse Coffee Roastery are private 1:1 or 1:2 sessions taught at our Shinjuku, Tokyo studio in English, Japanese, Mandarin, or Cantonese. Dates are flexible — get in touch to schedule.
